Cooking 9/10ths of the time

What is the difference? No idea. My mate Greg was coming for one of his now habitual Saturday morning visits with his similarly aged child - Emmett. The idea being that we get them together they play harmoniously for about 2 hours and we chat in an amiable and focussed manner. I see that some parents out there already are getting the joke. Ha yes. Of course it's nothing like that. At any rate I like to bake a little something and today it was apple cake. A spur of the moment idea, I was greatly moved by the picture of the cake, which looked sort of country style, homesy, kind of warm and as if some rosy cheeked, buxom, delightful older woman had whipped it up. Sometimes I like to imagine that I am that woman. no, not like this yes, exactly like this I was mixing and matching a bit, I didn't have any Granny Smith apples and they are my favourite to cook with. I noted, however , that the recipe didn't do anything quite so Nazi as actually dictate what sort of

Ok folks, I finally made a vanilla slice. In fact I made a Chantilly Vanilla Slice, which means that there is another layer, a "second" layer, if you will. It goes a bit like this. (Recipe is from Taste.com.au) Pull out square tin and realise that it is 3cm smaller than what is required and  that the sides are not high enough. Forge on anyway. Buy copious amounts of cream and wonder what you will do with it all should you never get the energy up to make the slice. Important Step: Wait until your small child is out of the house. This recipe requires lots of maintenance along the way and you can't nip off to untangle your child from a marionette toy or lift him off the top of the fridge. Step 1 .Pastry. I bought it from the shop. I don't need to make an already overly step laden process more difficult by making pastry and that's that. Cook three sheets at high heat and let them puff up.. They look like adorable little pillows, and then they p

It's the plum cake. It's back, and so heartbreakingly lovely I might cry. This is called Mieze's Plum Cake, I don't know who Mieze is, but she's friends with Stephanie Alexander and that's good enough for me. The cake is lovely and buttery and moist. The plum are caramelised on top and, WARNING, so piquant and divine you may well swoon if you come within 2 metres of the cake. As always I am happy to post the recipe, which is extremely easy! Delightfully so. Mieze's Plum Cake Ingred - a - ments 180g softened butter 150g castor sugar 135g plain flour 135g self-raising flour pinch of salt 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 70ml milk 1/2 cup ground almonds (or fresh breadcrumbs) 10-12 ripe blood plums, halved and stoned Topping 60g butter 1/2 cup castor sugar 2 tsp ground cinnamon 2 large eggs Preheat oven to 200C and lightly grease a 26cm springform tin. (I used a silicone 23cm "tin" which was fine, I just made sure to line i

What a combo I thought nuts, caramel and chocolate together at last AND upside down!!! What a crazy, zany idea. So the basic concept is that you make a caramel, put chopped nuts on that and then the batter on that and cook, When you turn it out the nuts have all melded to the cake with caramel goodness. The cake itself is easy to make, apart from the fact that there are a few steps and a bit of chopping, the gotcha is in the actual cake tin. Mine wasn't high enough in the sides. Make sure that you genuinely have a high sided tin. The caramel gets hotter than the mix and bubbles up around the sides and makes a bit of a mess, I imagine this is mitigated somewhat by a higher sided tin, or make it in a 23 cm tin. Recipe (From the the Women's Weekly chocolate cook book) 2 Tblsp chopped macadamias 2 Tblsp chopped roasted pistachios 2 Tblsp chopped roasted walnuts (I used pecans) 125 g butter chopped 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar 3 eggs 1 cup SR flour 1/4 cup p

What and What? Have you gone mad woman! Pumpkin and ginger in some sort of unholy cupcake alliance! Calm down denizons of the cupcake, and other sweet treats. I think that they can live together harmoniously, all it took was the calming presence of sugar... I decided to make these as a sort of clever way to get pumpkin into my kid, although truth be told, Gabe never eats the actual cake, he's more of a frosting expert. I decided not to frost these, but instead went for a chantilly ginger cream with a coupla berries on top. They were easy to make and they were lovely and moist.. But Gabe never even ate a bite... :)   Recipe (From the Cupcake Kit, a book that came with a bunch of cupcake stuff) 1 1/2 cups unbleached flour 3/4 teaspoon baking powder 3/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 cup unsalted butter , melted and cooled slightly (1/2 a cup, who are these people that think that we can measure

This recipe looked particularly lovely, and I have a slavish devotion to ginger at any rate. I'm telling you right away, this is my favourite slice at the moment, knocking "the bus drivers' mother in laws almond slice" off the top. It is: 1. Easy to make 2. Smells good whilst cooking 3. Tastes VERY good indeed. I find that people who are ginger lovers are pretty fixated in general, I think that this one is a bit of a winner all round, but ginger-nuts.. this one's for you. I have a whole container at the moment, as you can see from the pic, Recipe 125 grams butter room temp 100g castor sugar 225g SR flour 2 tsp ginger Caramel icing 150g butter 230g icing sugar 80 ml golden syrup 1 1/2 Tbs ginger Preheat over to 180 Grease and line a 20 x 30cm lamington or slice tray. Mine is 17 x 27 for some crazy reason and I had no issue with that. Allow the paper to overhang the sides a bit. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Ad

Well, possibly, a world first. I googled it and couldn't find anything like this. There are versions that use lemon though, and its all in the (citrus) family... There is a magnificent kumquat tree on Pigdon street - Gabe and I always stop there because a) he likes to crush the fallen Kumquats under his feet and b) there are a great deal of snails to be found in that garden. I had been building up the courage for weeks to knock on the door and ask if I could take some of the kumquats. Although I am a fairly confident person, I am not much one for the unsolicited conversation. So I knocked on the door (so did Gabe). A woman calls out querulously "Yes?". I ask her about the kumquats. "Oh, yes take as many as you want" - she can't find her keys apparently and so can't open the door to actually look at me. I plan to come back there next day. The next day I do my back in so devastatingly that I can barely walk around without pain, much less

I decided to adapt my pineapple, apricot and ginger cake from being a big ole cake into being smaller more eatier mouthfuls. Off I went into my gothic castle (victorian terrace) on the storm topped mount (carlton nth) to make myself a monster (muffin). With my faithful man servant Igor (Gabriel) I moved the very fabric of time and space (eggs and butter) and made my unholy union! (muffins!) Point being, it worked quite well I thought, and I love plain lemon icing, it is my absolute favourite, kind of a little bit icing-y and also a bit sour (plus crackly, what's not to like?) Lookit us! We're adorable!   So this gets me thinking, baking people, how many of our favourite recipes that come in the 12 inch mix can be reduced to a 2 min pop song. Am I labouring my metaphors too much? I can't help it, once I start mixing, everything gets involved, metaphors included! I'm going to see what else I can make into a muffin! Here's the recipe (From Comp

I needed something easy to make today, not feeling like lots of bother and not feeling like chocolate either. So I whipped up these brownies. More accurately "yellowies" or "lemonies". Very easy recipe - one bowl and they are really DELICIOUS. Moist but with the kind of comforting density one associates with actual brownies. They were particularly good slightly warm. I am now contemplating a chocolate cake with butterscotch icing. I would also like to make a really lovely strawberry tart from the ground up... The Recipe Preheat overn to 180 and grease and line a 20 x 30 base measurement lamington tin. (Mine was slightly bigger and it was fine) 250g butter 2 cups castor sugar 4 eggs 1 cup dessicated coconut 1 & 1/2 cups of plain flour 3 tsp finely grated lemon rind 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice Melt butter in saucepan over low heat. Stir in sugar and then the eggs until the mix is glossy. Sift the flour over the mix and stir until well c

This was chosen by Carolyn as the snack for our Thursday work day. Each week the three of us meet on Thursday to work and we eat cake, or biscuits or slice. This is a pleasurable state of affairs and usually means that I get to try various recipes out on Ying and Carolyn. Both of whom are very agreeable and welcoming Guinea Pigs. No strawberries were harmed in the making of this slice. That's not true, three were eaten. I couldn't actually envision this one and wondered if it was going to be a bit like a sort of extended choc chip cookie.  This is a very easy recipe to make, and it turns out very well and yes, it's like an extended choc chip cookie. Which is quite a good thing. Sexier, more chippy angle Here's the recipe.  (From Woolworths Good taste baking booklet) Choc-chip Slice 150 g butter room temp 100 grams castor sugar 1 tsp vanilla essence 2 eggs 250gms of choc buds 110gms almond meal 75 gms plain flour 75gms self raising flour 1 Tbs

Another cooking blog. Groan, just what the fucking world needs. More people going on and on about how awesome they are at cooking or how you can feed your kid some macrobiotic thingo stuff that will make them happy and smart or how you can make meals in 42 seconds. Nope. No. That's not me. I cook full fat, I cook with chocolate and butter and lots of sugar. And I make mistakes all the time! But I love baking, and as Jefferson Starship say, nothings gonna stop us now. Or rather me. I don't know what the fuck you're up to.